Last of Her Name

by Jessica Khoury

  His smile fades slowly, and worry creeps into his eyes. I reach out impulsively and grab his hand.

  “It’s going to work out,” I say. “Your trial, I mean. They have to see you were doing the right thing.”

  He stares at my hand in his. “It would be easier to face if I’d found her.”

  “Natalya’s out there. There’s still hope.”

  He meets my gaze. “Like your friend Clio.”

  I nod. “Like my friend Clio. We’ll get them back, Riyan.”

  I hear a cough and realize Pol is standing a few feet away. I drop Riyan’s hand and turn to him, my cheeks warming.

  Pol looks like an entirely different aeyla from the one I nursed on the trip here, thanks to his Trying and, I have to admit, Damai’s expert care. The gold has returned to his complexion and the brightness to his eyes. He wears tensor clothing, loose gray garments that wrap and tie and hang in a way that only highlights his new physique. It’s impossible to look at him and not lose my breath, as I’m still adjusting to the changes the Trying worked in him. With his broader shoulders, longer horns, and sharpened bone structure, Pol is almost a stranger, and I feel a disconcerting surge of shyness when he looks at me with those clear gray eyes. I have to remind myself this is the boy who once tripped over me in a footrace and landed in a heap of mantibu dung, just so I can breathe again.

  “Have a good time?” he asks stiffly. “I finally managed to escape your jailor of a sister, mate. Guess I was too late to join the fun.”

  “Oh, come on, you grouch.” I grab his sleeve, pulling him toward the lift. “Can I borrow those, Riyan?”

  Riyan nods and tosses me the cloaks. I pull mine on, and Pol puts on the other. The fur hood frames his face, making his cheekbones even more pronounced. Swallowing hard, I stare at my shoes and tell myself the tumbling sensation in my stomach is just due to the rapidly rising lift.

  At the top of the pyramid, the lift slows and the door opens. We step out onto the immense flat top of Tyrrha, where the cold leaves me breathless. I pull on my cloak and hug it tight, watching my breath frost the night air. Dusty snow blows around us; it pricks my face and glitters on the ends of my hair.

  Standing here, I can feel the true immensity of the pyramid. It’s three miles across, three miles wide. You could drop a city on top of it.

  The moon has turned its face away from the planet, so the whole of the galaxy is before us. We’re staring into the unexplored wilderness of the universe. The stars are endless, dust upon silver dust, cold and brilliant in the night. I stare at them and wonder if the Prismata is somewhere in that darkness, a cold and lonely crystal light-years away. The key to controlling a galaxy, just waiting to be found, and somehow, the only map is linked to me.

  Maybe it’s best I never find the Firebird, and the Prismata remains hidden away. No one should have that much power.

  “There.” Pol pokes my shoulder, and I turn and follow his pointing finger.

  “Home,” he whispers.

  My eyes fix on the little dot of light that is Amethyne’s sun. From this distance, it appears silver blue. It occurs to me that the light I’m seeing would have taken thousands of years to reach Diamin. Under that star, there’s no war destroying my home. There are no vityazes, no humans, no aeyla. Just a warm little planet turning in the sky. I’m staring into the past, and the past stares back.

  “I brought you something,” I say. I take a small box from my pocket and open it. A snowball sits inside, kept cool by a tiny generator in the hinge. I take it out and set it onto Pol’s palm.

  He gives a little laugh, turning it over. Then he pinches off some and sticks it on his tongue.

  “I’ve always wanted to do that,” he says.

  “How is it?”

  “Good.” He pinches off another bit and holds it out. I open my mouth, and he pops it onto my tongue. I let it sit there and melt, the coldness making my mouth tingle.

  “Not as good as Ravi’s though,” I point out. “Not even a hint of strawberry.”

  Pol watches me, his eyes as gray as the snow clouds. “I never thanked you for what you did. For me. On the ship.”

  I swallow the melted snow, shivering as it races down my throat. “Oh. It was nothing.”

  “But it wasn’t nothing, was it?”

  “Pol …” I look down, frowning at my boots.

  “How long are we going to avoid talking about it?”

  Heat rushes to my cheeks. “There’s nothing to say! We … we were caught up in the Trying ceremony, and I’d thought you were dead just days before. Anyway, you’re the one who started it, not me.”

  “So there was an ‘it’?”

  “Ugh! That’s not what I meant.” I turn away, pressing my hands to my flushed face. I stare across the dark mountains, trying to calm my quickening pulse. I can feel Pol’s eyes following me.

  “You’re right, you know,” he says. “I did start it.”

  I look back at him. “What’s that? Did Pol Androsthenes honestly admit I was right?”

  He frowns. “I’m not joking, Stace. Not now.”

  I don’t like the way he’s looking at me. I don’t like the way my heart is jumping at the memory of my hand pressed to his chest, our skin separated only by a thin layer of paint.

  “We should go back inside,” I say, turning and walking past him, toward the lift, but stop when he begins to speak.

  “Do you remember back when I was thirteen,” he says quietly, “and you were twelve, and we found out the mantibu ranch across town was selling all its elderly animals to a slaughterhouse?”

  I turn back to him, eyebrows rising. “We ran all the way there, as fast as we could. I was crying the whole way, I was so angry.”

  “You made me pretend my leg was broken so the ranchers would be distracted while you opened the barn. You chased those mantibu so deep into the hills the ranchers gave up looking.”

  I snort. “Dad was furious with me. He made me scrub every vat in the winery twice, as punishment.”

  “And you conned me into doing the work for you.”

  I give him a sheepish grin. “I’d forgotten all about that day.”

  “I hadn’t.” He stares straight into my eyes. “Because that was the day I fell in love with you.”

  I stop breathing.

  Pol steps closer, his eyes burning into mine, his cheeks flushed from the cold. I’m pinned beneath that gaze, my body turned to stone.

  This cannot be happening.

  These words can’t be coming from his lips.

  I stare at him, snow swirling around him, the stars shining above him, everything about this moment impossible.

  “My dad figured it out by the time I was twelve,” he continues. “And that’s why he told me the truth about you and our family’s history. Because he wanted me to understand why you could never be mine. And so I tried to forget what I felt. I really did. Especially since you never seemed to see me the same way.”

  I turn away from him, my chest pressing tight. I hold a hand to it as my mind spins. “Why are you telling me all this?”

  Pol lowers his hood, as if shedding a lifelong disguise. “Because you told me you couldn’t trust me anymore. So I’m done lying. Maybe you’ll never trust me again, and maybe I deserve that, but I’ll still keep trying. Till the day I die, Stace, I’ll be trying to earn your trust back.”

  “I can’t … I can’t think about this right now. Pol, I …”

  I turn around, and he’s there, his hands sliding up my arms. Somehow my fingers find his waist, and I grip the cloth of his cloak.

  My eyes meet his—my head tilted back, his bent toward mine. Snowflakes dance around him, melting on his hair, turning to water that slides down his temple and cheeks. The wind ruffles the fur lining of his cloak; it brushes against his jaw. His horns shine silver in the starlight.

  He looks at me like I am air and he cannot breathe.

  “I know you might not feel the same way,” he whispers. “I know you think I�
�m dull and stubborn. But I can’t go on like this, pretending that the sight of you doesn’t hit me like lightning. Back on the asteroid, when Zhar asked me to choose between you and my mission, I realized it was never the mission I cared about. It was you, Stace. It was always you. And, stars damn me, I’m in love with you.”

  I stare into his stormy eyes, at a loss for words, at a loss for breath.

  He is relentless, his hands gripping my arms like I’m the only thing tethering him to the ground. “I love your tenacity, how you’ll run miles across town on the hottest day of the year to save something everyone else has given up on. I love how you look at the stars, like you want to peel them from the sky and swallow them whole. I love that you can’t see the horizon without needing to discover what’s beyond it.”

  I don’t know what to say.

  I don’t understand the feelings that flutter in me like leaves stirred in the wind. There is something deep down, fighting to be made known, words waiting to be whispered, but I cannot catch them. They come and are gone, like falling stars.

  I pull away, brushing back my hair, exhaling long and slow in an attempt to calm my pulse. Stars, this is Pol. I know him better than almost anyone. So why do I suddenly feel as if he were a stranger? As if he is calling to some part of me I didn’t know existed, as if there’s another voice in my head crying out to be heard by him?

  My words finally rush out, all at once. “I can’t—I can’t do this right now. Clio—”

  “Clio.” His eyes are pained. He can’t look at me, and I feel my cheeks heat with warmth.

  “Clio’s loved you since she was a kid,” I say. “I can’t do this to her. Neither can you.”

  “I don’t … I don’t love Clio, Stacia. I can’t. She’s not …” He lets out a growl of frustration, stepping back and rubbing his face.

  “Well, maybe you don’t love her,” I return, “but I do.”

  I run past him, nearly slipping on the smooth, wet surface of the pyramid. I practically leap into the lift and then punch the controls inside, letting out a relieved breath when it sinks back into the pyramid.

  I’m enclosed with my own turbulent thoughts, my watery reflection looming on each of the lift’s smooth walls. I feel like I’ve betrayed my best friend. I didn’t kiss him, but oh stars, I was close to it. I wanted to, and isn’t that just as bad? How will I tell her about this night?

  My stomach rocks like I’m an out of control shuttle, burning through the atmosphere. I sink down to sit on the lift’s hard floor, arms wrapped around my knees, still breathing hard. I can feel him, his hands, his breath, his chest against mine.

  The lift comes to a silent, gentle stop, and I rise and stumble out into the corridor leading to the room I share with Mara. I follow it slowly, hand trailing the polished stone wall. Candles burn along the floor, their flickering light making my shadow dance beside me.

  I pause in front of our door, collecting my breath, silencing my thoughts. The past few weeks have been a mad race across the stars, from one danger to the next. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? Who can say how long any of us has?

  I almost lost Pol twice, when he was shot, and during his Trying. I remember how it felt to hold him as he inched toward death, watching for his every ragged breath, fearing he’d slipped away from me. Shaken by how frightened I was. Even more frightened by how badly I needed him.

  I can’t love him, but I can’t lose him again.

  No matter where I go or how far I run, I will have a target on my head. And everyone around me will pay the price. My parents, Spiros, Clio … I can’t keep letting others get hurt for me. Pol might be the only one left I can save. He’s bound his fate to mine, but it’s time I set him free—him and Riyan and everyone else who’s helped me.

  The longer I run, the more people get hurt.

  So maybe it’s time to stop running and accept the inevitable: I can’t save both my friends and myself. The choice has been in front of me since all of this started.

  It’s time I finally found the courage to make it.

  Riyan’s trial is to be held in a massive room at the heart of Tyrrha, ominously named the Chamber of Judgment. Mara and I blend in with the streams of tensors heading that way. The corridors echo with shuffling footsteps and hushed voices. The solemnity in the air fills me with dread.

  Stone benches, stacked at sharp angles along the sloping walls, overlook a central platform of shining diamantglass. High above, a cylindrical shaft rises all the way to the top of Tyrrha, where a circular hatch has been opened to allow a single beam of twilight to shine down on the accused.

  When I arrive with Mara, the place is almost full.

  “I feel sick,” I murmur, looking across the gathered people.

  We find Damai already there, with six more girls lined up beside her. It’s not hard to tell by their wiry dark hair and tall, lean physiques who they are. All of Riyan’s sisters watch the central platform and whisper to one another.

  Mara and I sit by them, leaving a seat open between Damai and me. I push my hand into the pocket of my coat and grip the small tabletka hidden inside. Without turning my head, I glance down at the screen.

  I have no way of knowing whether the message I sent this morning reached its intended target, but I have to be ready in case it did. My stomach is in knots. What if the Tensors have jamming equipment to block messages from being transmitted offworld? Even worse—what if they don’t, and the message did get through, and I’ve made a terrible mistake?

  I try to focus on Riyan for now.

  Pol appears and slides into our row, taking the seat between Damai and me. I stiffen, conscious of every inch of space between us.

  “Stacia. Did you sleep well?”

  I scowl. “You’ve never asked me that question before. Don’t start now.”

  “Just trying to be nice.”

  “Don’t start that, either. Things are weird enough.”

  “I’m sorry,” he replies softly, and my heart squeezes at the flash of pain in his eyes.

  He turns to greet Damai. The two start laughing over something she says. I set my jaw and look the other way.

  I’ve never felt like this around him before—shy, awkward, my heart fluttering like a startled butterfly. Deep down, I know that now we can never go back to the way things were. So where does that leave us?

  Stars blast you, Appollo Androsthenes. Why couldn’t he have just kept his mouth shut? Why can’t he feel for Clio the way she feels for him? And why can’t I stop imagining the weight of his hands on me and the warmth of his breath on my neck?

  The Lord Tensor enters, and the crowd falls quiet. He wears black robes today, his expression solemn as he slowly proceeds toward the center of the chamber. Twelve tensors follow behind him. Their faces are lined, and the hair of the unshaven ones is silver. Solemnly they spread into a semicircle, each cupping in their hands a small device that looks like a metal rosebud. Once they’re in position, they wait in silence.

  “What’s happening, Damai?” I ask.

  She slides me a cool look. “They are the judges, bearers of the Legacy Stones, our most precious heirlooms.”

  “Look … I’m sorry this happening. I wish—”

  “This is bad enough without having to discuss it with you.”

  Getting the hint, I sink back into my seat and press my lips together.

  A deafening sound swells around us. A man is blowing into a massive horn that winds around the walls and under the benches, incorporated into the very architecture. It sounds like the dinner horn, but deeper and more ominous. The noise is so loud my bones seem to rattle. It fills the cavity of my chest and reverberates in my teeth.

  My hand inches reflexively toward Pol’s, but then I catch myself and pull it back.

  A door across the room opens, and in walks Riyan, flanked by six tensors. Though his hands aren’t bound, it still seems like they’re treating him like a prisoner. Anger unfurls in my chest, but I know I can’t interfere. His people’s cus
toms aren’t mine to challenge, and he chose to be here. Whatever happens, I’m only a witness. So though it chafes every instinct in my body, I stay still and harden my jaw.

  Riyan and the other tensors arrange themselves before the judges. He keeps his head high, expression calm. He bows to his father and the judges, taking his time. I wonder how he can look so serene in the face of such injustice. If I were him, I’d be scorching the walls with my cursing and rage.

  “Riyan Ayedi, Son of Tyrrha,” says one of the judges, a hunched woman with long white hair. “Charges have been made against you. We will hear them now. Will you accept our judgment?”

  Riyan bows his head. “I accept.”

  One of the tensors—Jorian, of course—begins listing Riyan’s litany of supposed offenses. He does so with flourish, making the whole thing a performance.

  “… exposing tensor secrets to uninitiated outsiders, consorting with radical insurgents, stealing the Lord Tensor’s own ship, demonstrating an egregious lack of self-control …”

  To hear him speak, you would think Riyan was an enemy to all humanity and a threat to galactic order.

  I roll my eyes and sink deeper into my seat, steaming. Riyan remains calm—but I notice a vein in his temple start to pulse a bit.

  Perhaps he’s human after all.

  “Riyan Ayedi,” says the gray-haired woman, “how do you answer the charges laid against you?”

  “I refute none of them,” Riyan replies. “I stole a ship that belonged to the Lord Tensor. I crossed the Diamin Wall. I risked exposing our secrets to our enemies. I broke our laws, and I will face judgment for it.”

  Damai gives a little groan and sinks deeper into her seat, her fingers pressed to her forehead.

  “Can you offer any explanation for your actions?” asks the judge.

  Riyan pauses for a moment. His eyes flicker across the audience, resting on me for a brief moment before settling on his father. “I acknowledge that I transgressed our sacred laws, and fully accept punishment for that. I ask you to consider, however, the circumstances of my crimes.”

  Damai and her sisters sit up straighter, exchanging surprised looks. I hear her murmur, “That’s it, brother. Fight back.”